The hardwood forest third birthday and a (incomplete) tree list.

This blog’s regular readers, all four of them, may remember that three years ago we set aside around half an acre to plant with a mixture of indigenous forest trees and shrubs selected by our friends Sakchai and Gatai from Wanakaset Chachoengsao.

In total we planted around 1200 seedlings and/or roots of approximately 100 different species, on the day they arrived they all fit in the back of a standard pick up truck, it took us two days to plant them all out, the planting holes having been prepared a few days before.

The forest’s third birthday was some time during May this year, some of the fastest growing trees, like teak, are now about 5m tall, most of the other hardwoods are at least 3m, some of the forest mangoes are even fruiting and the wild grasses that grew when the ground was cleared are slowing down as the shade begins to cover the “forest floor”.

These pictures were taken this morning roughly from the same spot as the old ones. As the forest gets established it requires less and less work, this year Thailand suffered the worst drought in 65 years and the weather was very hot during April and May, but the forest survived very well without any help from us after the first year.

Next year we should be ready to add a layer of ground cover species and a layer of climbing vines and some more roots. Another interesting aspect is that birds are beginning to nest on the larger trees and therefore they will be in a good position to take over the “planting”, or at least that’s the idea.

In no particular order here is an incomplete tree list, most of the larger trees are listed first.

This is amazing – One of the things I have been so looking forward to learning when I move to Mae Mut is the tree diversity. I didn’t know you were doing this project. I want to study the phenology of the native trees, and make an identification guide. I’d love to collect seeds in the surrounding forest and experiment with getting them to germinate. Beautiful!